doug> made a point of getting him to say that, by the way - and also the
doug> follow-up, on how the U.S. is an "incomparably" more civilized
doug> society than it was 40 years ago. I'm guessing a lot of his fans
doug> wouldn't say that.
I'm not sure about that. In his talk in Austin yesterday (which was so well attended -- there were probably 5000 people -- that it filled the main hall, 3 overflow rooms, and finally they just stuck a huge speaker outside the LBJ auditorium and broadcast him to that part of the campus) one of the lines which got the biggest applause from the audience was precisly that claim: that the US, as a result of the social movements of 60s and since, is a *vastly more civilized place* than it was before.
That not only got one of the largest positive responses from the audience, but in my view it was a very pro-Chomsky crowd, full of his "fans".
Kendall Clark